Chris Jericho Describes What It Was Like Stepping Up to Fight Brock Lesnar Backstage
The infamous encounter between Chris Jericho and Brock Lesnar at the 2016 WWE SummerSlam has been brought up in interviews for years. The story goes that, after Lesnar removed his gloves and left Randy Orton in a pool of his own blood at the end of the pay-per-view, Chris Jericho rushed to Gorilla Position thinking that Lesnar had snapped and had brutally injured "The Viper" on purpose. He stepped up to fight the former UFC Heavyweight Champion, but the two were separated before punches could be thrown. Jericho is booked to face The Men of the Year and another former UFC Heavyweight Champion, Junior dos Santos, on this week's edition of AEW Rampage and was asked about that Lesnar confrontation while speaking with Sports Illustrated.
"When you get into that moment, it is what it is," Jericho said. "You either go for it, or you put your tail between your legs and hide, and I've never been that type of guy. I'm more of the type to die with boots on. So I've had my issues and shoots with MMA guys before, like that one with Brock Lesnar, and I survived by the skin of my teeth."
Orton was asked about the incident during an interview with TalkSport last year — "Basically, what happened is Jericho saw what was going on in the ring and wanted answers as to whether my best interests were in mind as far as my health and safety. I had my family there, sitting front row, and Chris knew that, as well. He was just coming up to check on his boy, that's what it boiled down to, and I think that's awesome.
"You hear all these things about how they were going to fight, but I don't think Jericho wanted to fight Brock, I'm just going to throw that out there," he added. "I think he was coming up to just make sure everything was cool. It's unfortunate that in that small space, with the dozen bodies in there, somehow that leaked and everybody knew about it. That's very unfortunate. It was blown way out of proportion, and Jericho just wanted to check on one of his fellow boys in the locker room.
Other matches confirmed for Friday's live edition of Rampage are Bryan Danielson vs. Minoru Suzuki, Bobby Fish vs. Lee Moriarty, CM Punk vs. Matt Sydal and Ruby Soho vs. The Bunny